…they should be taken with a grain of salt, he thought, because the most exaggerated speeches usually hid the weakest feelings — as though the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow into the emptiest phrases, since no one can ever express the exact measure of his needs, his conceptions or his sorrows, and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out crude rhythms for bears to dance to while we long to make music that will wring tears from the stars.”
— Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
three-six-double-one
© Kristine May (via Beauty in Everything - Photography)
(via immissingyou)
I’m sick of being told to be this and not that, to be right and not wrong, to be thinking ahead and not looking back, to be optimistic and not pessimistic, to be happy and not sad, up and not down, smiling and not frowning, laughing and not crying, confident but not arrogant, sensible and not immature. Being told who to love and who to hate, who to befriend and who to avoid, what to do and what not to do, what to want and what not to want, what you can do and what you can’t do, what you should do and what you shouldn’t do.
What is so bad about the negatives? Why can’t I do that instead of this, and be wrong instead of right, to look back instead of thinking ahead, to be pessimistic instead of optimistic, to be sad instead of happy, down instead of up, frowning instead smiling, crying instead of laughing, showing signs of arrogance instead of confidence, being immature instead of being sensible? Doing whatever I want, whenever I want: what to do and what not to do, what I can and can’t do, should and shouldn’t? Is that a sin? What goes up must come down; what goes down must come up - shouldn’t there be a balance to life?